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158 words than they have given me, so help me God! from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but Í am well used to it; the poorest women fall back as I make my way along the crowded pavement." cc What dreadful cong Rose, involuntarily fal strange companion. *‘ Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,” cried the girl, “that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness, and—and something worse than all—as I have been from my cradle; I may use the word, for the alley and the utter were mine, as they will be my eath-bed.” “TI pity you!” said Rose ina broken voice. ‘It wrings my heart to hear you!” God bless you for your goodness rejoined the girl. "If you knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have stolen away from those who would surely murder me if they knew I had been here to tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a man named Monks?” s No,” said Rose. “He knows you,” replied the girl; c and knew you were here, for it was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.” s T never heard the name,” said Rose. s "Then he goes by some other amongst us,” rejoined the girl, “which I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after Oliver was putin your house on the night of the robbery, 1—suspecting this man—listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin in the dark. I found out from what I heard that Monks —the man I asked you about, you know—” “Yes,” said Rose, “I understand.” “That Monks,” pursued the girl, “had seen him accidentally with two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I couldn’t make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for some purpose of his own." s For what purpose?” asked Rose. s He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened in the hope of finding are these!” said ling from her 19" | out,’ said the girl; “and there are not many people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last night.” 6 And what occurred then?" “Tl tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went up stairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow should not betray me, again listened at the door. ‘The first words I heard Monks say were these. ‘So, the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is in her coffin.” They laughed and talked of his success in doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild, said that though he had got the young devil’s money safely now, he’d rather have had it the other way ; for, what a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the father’s will, by driving him through every jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital felony, which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit of him besides.” “ What is all this!” said Rose. “The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,” replied the girl. ‘Then he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strangers to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy’s life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but as he couldn’t, he’d be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life, and if he took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. ‘In short, Fagin,’ he says, ‘Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as I’ll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.’ ” c His brother!” exclaimed Rose, clasping her hands. “Those were his words,” said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as she had scarcely ceased to do since she began to speak, for a vision of Sikes haunted her perpetually. “And more. When he spoke of you and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by heaven, or the devil, against him, that Oliver should come into your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had them, to know who your twolegged spaniel was." “ You do not mean,” said Rose, turning
